Ark Survival Evolved celebrates its one year anniversary

Ark: Survival Evolved celebrates being one years old today, and what a fantastic year it has been. Taking what people love about looting, crafting and leveling up in open world games, and throwing dinosaurs into the mix, which can be killed or tamed. Ark has been a massive success, and its one year anniversary is rewarding its players.

Patch 242 has now gone live on Steam (not on Xbox One as it’s only 6 months old), which Studio Wildcard are calling “ARK Birthday Event”. Being a birthday, you would expect some stereotypical items such as hats, cake and presents, right? Well, guess what? That’s exactly what Studio Wildcard are offering, and more!

“Players can find Candles from Supply crates to craft ARK Birthday Cakes! When each candle is blown out, a special message to the players occur and exclusive items are gifted, including: Player and Dino Party Hats, Fun “Birthday Suits” (censor-pixelization of course ;)), and finally, as everyone knows there’s no party without a cake – a giant ARK Anniversary Birthday Cake which can be consumed for a major XP Buff!”

New creatures have also been added in, which include the Diplodocus Insulaprincep, which is among the Island’s smaller sauropods which allows it to offer maximum speed and greater endurance compared to its giant brethren! Once tamed, a tribe can then mount a massive saddle on it allowing for 10 tribesmen to ride on it!

The other new creature is the Leech. “The Leech is one of the more detestable creatures of the island. The disease-carrying blood-sucker, Haementeria Iaetus has practically no intelligence, and merely attaches to any nearby living flesh in an attempt to drain that creature’s blood. Not tamable, the Leech does not provide much of a resource for any tribe, though some have been known to keep them around in order to create antidotes: When processed carefully, Haementaria venom can be made into powerful anti-venom!”

Another new addition is the Training Dummy. “The Training Dummy which will display floating Damage Per Second values indicating how strong each dino attack actually is, while the new mechanic, Permanent Diseases & Cures, will enable players to deliberately infect Dodos to use them as Disease Vectors! If you get a permanent disease, it persists even beyond respawn and you will need to cure it with an antidote using the blood of the leeches!”

Servers can now optionally enable an “offline raiding prevention” mode which will make Dinos/Structures invincible if no owner is logged-in (indicated via the head whether the owner player/tribe is logged-in or not). Recommend that server owners utilize this with care, as it may have undesired side effects in a competitive environment

Tribe Groups Phase 2: Support for Limited Non-Admin Invites and promotions/demotions per group! Also “Prevent Dino Unclaiming” checkbox, and other new per-rank options

Added Alpha Mosasaurus (contains lots of Black Pearls)

Alpha creatures XP reduced by 45%

Auto-Turrets can no longer be built on Quetz/Sauro/Mosa/Plesi/Paracer platforms (Plant turrets can’t be grown on them). Any existing turrets on such platforms will no longer fire. Otherwise they’re now only allowed on Rafts and non-moving Bases.

Plant Turrets now consume Fertilizer per shot, and also will not shoot if no water is in the crop plot.